December 2012
Here's Why Hundreds of NYC Fast Food Workers Are Striking Today →
soc.li
Workers at dozens of fast-food restaurants in New York City walked off the job Thursday morning. Organizers say New Yorkers will see hundreds of workers on strike at some of the largest fast food chains including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Domino’s, Taco Bell and other fast-food restaurants across the city.
The workers’ campaign is Fast Food Forward. They’re coming together to fight for $15 / hour and the right to form a union. The campaign’s goal is to put money back in the pockets of the 50,000 men and women who work hard in the city’s fast food industry - but still can’t afford basic necessities like food, clothing, and rent.
The workers coming together is a major act of courage because among them are some who have already faced retaliation for organizing today’s strike.
Jose Cerillo, a 79-year-old man who’s been cleaning floors at McDonald’s since 1996 was fired recently for organizing workers to support Fast Food Forward. After 16 years of working there he was making $7.40 an hour, 15 cents above minimum wage, Salon.com reports.
You can support the workers by signing the campaign’s petition at Fastfoodforward.org.
Also, If you’re in New York you can support the workers by visiting one of the picket sites listed at the end of this story.
The organizing drive is backed by community organizing groups like New York Communities for Change as well as the SEIU. New York Communities for Change organizing director Jonathan Westin told Salon the current effort is “the biggest organizing campaign that’s happened in the fast food industry.”
The main strike sites and picket times are listed below:
McDonalds- 280 Madison avenue @40th street-6am (media location 6:30am)
Yum and Burger King-Penn Station-Midtown- 11am-1pm (Media location noon) Gather at BK on 34th between 7th and 8th.
Wendy’s- 425 Fulton St. Wendy’s-Brooklyn-11am -1pm (Media location noon)
McDonalds- 220 West 42nd Street- Times Square- 4pm-6pm (Rally/ media location 5pm)
additional picket locations & times
1) Harlem-McDonalds- 145 east 125 street 11am-1pm
2) Harlem- McDonalds- 2142 3rd Ave 10-noon
3) Brooklyn-KFC- 495 Nostrand Ave noon-1pm
4) Brooklyn KFC-798 4th Ave # 812 11a-noon
5) Times Square- McDonalds 1188 Avenue Of The Americas 7am-9:30am
That’s not even close to a livable wage in Manhattan.
“
Riding bikes everywhere? Using recyclable diapers? Carpooling? We’ve been doing that in Eritrea for decades. Where’s our reward for saving the Earth? Why aren’t we plastered all over Time magazine? If we lived in the same disgusting, gluttonous fashion that Americans lived, this planet would no longer be able to sustain the human race. But yet, they blame the world’s environmental ills on “overpopulation” (code: poor brown people existing) and then usurp our lifestyle habits, trademark it as their own and pat themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum.
How convenient of such a narcissistic nation.
” —My uncle, upon learning about America’s “new Green Movement”. Obviously, he’s not impressed. (via eastafrodite)If you have a parrot and you don’t teach it to say, “Help, they’ve turned me into a parrot”, you are wasting everybody’s time.
"James Bond is an Englishman. He has always been an Englishman and should always be played by Englishmen!"
A Partial List Of Men Who Are Not English
- Sean Connery
- George Lazenby
- Pierce Brosnan
A Partial List Of Men Who Are English
- Idris Elba
Tell me again how your objection to Idris Elba playing James Bond is rooted in his identity as an Englishman.
Paul Krugman: The War on Objectivity →
krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Brad DeLong points me to this National Review attack on Nate Silver, which I think of as illustrating an important aspect of what’s really happening in America.
[…]
Yet the right — and we’re not talking about the fringe here, we’re talking about mainstream commentators and publications — has been screaming “bias”! They know, just know, that Nate must be cooking the books. How do they know this? Well, his results look good for Obama, so it must be a cheat. Never mind the fact that Nate tells us all exactly how he does it, and that he hasn’t changed the formula at all.
This is, of course, reminiscent of the attack on the Bureau of Labor Statistics — not to mention the attacks on climate science and much more. On the right, apparently, there is no such thing as an objective calculation. Everything must have a political motive.
This is really scary. It means that if these people triumph, science — or any kind of scholarship — will become impossible. Everything must pass a political test; if it isn’t what the right wants to hear, the messenger is subjected to a smear campaign.
November 2012
A Quick Guide to Whether a Woman Owes You Something
- Dude: I want to know if a woman owes me something.
- Guide: Well, did you enter into a loan contract with a woman, providing her with goods or money that has not yet been returned?
- Dude: No.
- Guide: Hmm. Well, do you have some other contractual agreement to provide goods or services in exchange for a compensation that has not yet been made?
- Dude: No.
- Guide: It doesn't sound like a woman owes you something.
- Dude: What if I sent her a private message on this web forum we both post at.
- Guide: Ah. She doesn't owe you shit.
- Dude: Well, what if I sent her a message on a dating site. That's just be rude to ignore.
- Guide: She doesn't owe you shit.
- Dude: Isn't it just common courtesy to write a detailed explanation of why she won't respond favorably to me after I've messaged her five times?
- Guide: She doesn't owe you shit.
- Dude: What if we go on a date and I buy her dinner...
- Guide: Doesn't owe you shit.
- Dude: Or if we've been dating a few months, and...
- Guide: Doesn't owe you shit.
- Dude: Well, how about we're married and I'm in the mood...
- Guide: She. Doesn't. Owe. You. Shit.
- Dude: Shouldn't I at least be entitled to some sort of...
- Guide: Don't owe you shit.
- Dude: Well, I don't think that's very decent.
- Guide: She still won't owe you shit.
“If a storm damages basic physical infrastructure (power lines, bridges) and imperils human life it would be the height of penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking to suppose that the afflicted area should wait months or years to repair the damage. Ultimately, anyplace is going to go back to robust wealth creation faster if basic stuff gets fixed up faster. But that requires financing by an entity capable of rapidly financing expensive projects—i.e., the federal government. Left to its own devices a storm-ravaged Delaware or Louisiana is going to be squeezed between balanced budget rules and falling sales tax receipts and be forced into an increasing state of dilapidation.”
—Matt Yglesias (via pantslessprogressive)
Paul Ryan Takes a Side in the War on Poverty: He's Against What Works →
commondreams.org
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
In 1959, 22.1 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line.
In 1969, 13.7 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line.
The poverty level has varied since 1969. It has gone as high as 15 percent. But it has never again gotten anywhere near where it was in 1959.
What changed during the 1960s to dramatically decrease poverty?
“Centralized, bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs” like Medicaid (1965), Medicare (1965), the initiatives launched with the Food Stamp Act of 1964 and Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 programs such as the Jobs Corps (1964) and Head Start (1965).
Those programs worked.
Those programs came from a Democratic President.
“There’s power in looking silly and not caring that you do”
—Amy Poehler (via abstraktum)
“
Here’s the thing, Republicans. Here’s the real reality of the situation:
Your side is the one trying to limit our access to birth control and abortion (a legal medical procedure).
Your politicians are the ones talking about how girls “rape easy,” and your sainted Ronald Reagan is the one who started the simultaneously racist, sexist and classist myth of the “welfare queen.”
Just this week, one of your own said he supported forcing women to give birth to a rapist’s baby, and your presidential candidate said he would not withdraw his support for him.
You’re the ones pushing the rumor that Obama’s mother was a porn star who gave birth in Kenya.
Your candidate slammed single mothers right in front of the first president ever born to one.
You’re the ones suggesting bills to cut aid to new mothers.
You’re the ones attempting to defund Planned Parenthoods across the country, which primarily serve young women.
You’re the ones voting down bills like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Violence Against Women Act.
Oh, and you’re the ones trying to kill Obamacare, which insures millions of American women.
So you’ll have to excuse me if I can’t get my hackles raised over a double entendre about voting and sex. If my choice is between a candidate who lets a celebrity make a cutesy video about her first time and a candidate who will not withdraw his endorsement of a man who says rape babies are part of God’s plan, it’s pretty clear who to choose.
Republicans have been hopping on the “Oh, no! Obama mentioned something about vaginas” Sanctimony Pony every chance they get because even they aren’t dense enough not to realize their party platform is inherently anti-woman. They will do whatever they can in order to pivot the conversation away from “women’s bodies should be subservient to their husbands and fertilized eggs” — because they know that both lady parts and lady smarts tremble in fear at the idea of a Romney presidency. And with good reason. As far as I can tell, most Republican politicians actually do hate me and every other liberal woman out there.
As a young woman, my health, reproductive rights and livelihood are directly threatened by a Romney presidency.
Your team is the one waging the War on Women. Trying to get my feathers ruffled because an ad subliminally mentions sex isn’t going to make me forget that.
” —Face it, Republicans: You’re the ones who hate women (via current)